Charles Manson Behind Bars (23 page)

As I had expected, Charlie had asked lots of questions in my absence, confirming the information upon my return. He was always cautious with others; he had good reason to be paranoid.

As far as the guards were concerned, I had had a real episode of “crazy.” I have the paperwork to prove how fooled they were. I should’ve received an Academy Award for my acting. Now, I have the belief that if I set my mind to it, I could play act as a doctor, priest, or even lawyer!

Charlie showed great pleasure to see me return, especially after he concluded that I had, in fact, remained loyal to him. Guards on the unit told me that Charlie wanted me back. My friend had requested that the cell be retained for me—and it was—for eight days! Usually, a void is filled within twenty-four hours when an inmate it taken to the psych ward, often with a newbie from the next incoming bus.

I refrained from exhibiting crazy behavior once I proved to myself that I could con the guards. I didn’t want to take any more medication I didn’t need, and I wearied of the extra attention I received from the prison psychologists. It pleased Charlie that I stopped acting crazy. It had upset him that I was doing so much to torment the guards. He was afraid for the added attention that my behavior would bring. I listened to him when he suggested that I start acting sensible. I think I was growing up, thanks in no small part to him. I began to utilize my time with more reading and drawing, instead of fighting against the system.

Charlie’s many television interviews included more than a bit of acting on his part. He explained that he was frequently playing to the cameras. If he were to give straight answers, or dull statements without any unusual antics, the piece might not have made it on the air, despite his notoriety. He informed me that he was acutely aware of his audience when he spoke--whenever he spoke. During the Geraldo interview, for instance, he was directing the action. He told the cameramen where to position the cameras and what shots to use.

“Geraldo and the camera crew were afraid of me,” he laughed. “They did what I told them to do because they knew that I am an expert on how to put on a show.”

Charlie confided in me that much of what he did for the cameras was play acting. When Diane Sawyer interviewed him, he made sure to put on a fearsome, evil demeanor. “That kind of show,” he explained, “sells tickets and brings in viewers.” He really didn’t care what others thought of him, as long as they were entertained and continued tune into him.

It bothered him that Geraldo was portrayed as a tough guy. “I was far tougher than Geraldo,” Charlie bragged. “It wasn’t until I was in handcuffs that Geraldo started to do his ‘macho’ thing,” It also bothered him that Geraldo sold millions of dollars worth of the video, while he made no money at all.

In addition to his interest in music and his desire to play act, Charlie wanted to change the current state of prison life. He admitted that he himself was securely protected and relatively affluent behind bars. “My situation is not typical,” he told me. “Most inmates don’t have the money that I have. They have nothing and no one to take care of them.”

Charlie helped me understand that the whole prison system is in dire need of change. Little by little, through our conversations, he showed me that there were problems, and suggested possible actions to improve the system. For nearly thirty years, inmates have had their rights violated by the extensive and indiscriminate financial cuts to prison programs. Almost every area of inmate life has been affected by rationings in the funding for prisons and prisoners. The lack of educational opportunities among inmates as a result of eliminated vocational training, and prison over-crowding, for examples, make the current situation only a faint shadow of what prisons once were.

There was a time when prisons were devoted to the rehabilitation of inmates, Charlie related to me. Since most inmates would be back on the streets again someday, great effort was done to educate, train, and build up the self-esteem of prisoners. That was the best way to fight the high rates of recidivism and the increase in crime. Accordingly, prisons aided their residents in obtaining degrees, finding vocations, and learning to love themselves and others. Classes were encouraged, even mandated for some prisoners. Professors were brought in from nearby colleges. Each prisoner was put on a long-term guidance plan.

Governor Pete Wilson, and his political cronies, began deep budget cuts from which the system has never recovered, despite the fact that his administration was followed by numerous other governors and legislatures. Today, as a result of financial corner-cutting, most programs have either been eliminated or severely scaled back. Even the quality of food provided to prisoners has suffered. Refined sugar has been replaced by artificial sweeteners that are known to be cancer-causing agents. Second-rate food is now regularly passed off as a meal simply because it has sufficient calories and nutritional content.

The medical needs of inmates have also been overlooked. Charlie didn’t need to tell me about this. I witnessed first hand that inmates who break an ankle are provided with medical technical assistants (MTAs), and not doctors and nurses. They are provided with ice for the swelling, rather than the needed X-rays. Medications are also withheld from all but the most severe cases, as if the system can save a few pennies by stingily hoarding what is needed by the inmates. People need to realize that when prisoners are denied proper dental and medical care, the whole of society suffers.

The flawed system relies too much on the grievance process. Authorities won’t take action unless, and until, a 602 grievance form is filled out and submitted, if even then. The grievance process can take up to six months or longer. It would be in the prison’s best interest, and in the interest of the inmate, to initiate a preventative and pre-emptive system that anticipates the inmate’s needs and works to meet them. As it is, the system is unsympathetic until a crisis happens. Then, once a form is filled out, it may take months before any action is taken. By this time, much of the damage is beyond repair.

Most inmates, nearly 90 percent of them, are in prison on a drug and alcohol related charges, or were found to be under the influence of drugs and alcohol when they committed the acts for which they are incarcerated. Clearly, the system needs to deal effectively with these chemical intoxicants before any productive reforms can be implemented. Prosecutors and judges need to make the temporary insanity defense more readily available to defendants: if alcohol and certain drugs are legal, then we can’t hold it against individuals who make one or two bad choices while under the influence. Preventative efforts would pay valuable dividends here, too.

Charlie was very much into the community idea of care. When we spoke about the needs of inmates, we meant all the needs of the entire population. We didn’t single out the rich or white collar criminal, the one who seems to receive preferential treatment today. Charlie told me that a society is only as good as its care for its lowest members. It was the lowest that he cared for when he was out of prison; it was the lowest for which he provided when he expressed his generosity behind bars.

To emphasize his point, Charlie repeated a story that he had already told me. Whether it was from forgetfulness (maybe Alzheimer’s) or from a need to reinforce what he had previously said, I don’t know. He related to me again that while he was in San Quentin, he befriended a bird. The small sparrow grew to trust and rely on him. “The bird started to get so used to me feeding it,” he said, “that it no longer went to find its own food. It just came to me.”

Charles Manson was transferred to the California Medical Facility (CMF) from San Quentin in 1974. Located in Vacaville, CMF is a prison hospital in Northern California that treats all the inmates who are mentally ill, crippled, intellectually challenged, and whoever else wants to go there for whatever reason or ailment. It was built in 1955, and now stands next to the Northern California Prison, a reception center for the inmates who come fresh from the streets or from a county jail to be processed for prison. In addition to psych-evaluations, CMF conducts educational aptitude tests and other evaluations to see whether convicts can be placed in a job. Classification scores are aggregated to determine where inmates would be best suited within the system.

Charlie told me: “They sent me to Vacaville to have a psych evaluation and they started pumping me with all kinds of psycho-tropic drugs. It was done involuntarily and I was taking medication I didn’t need. They just kept giving me pill after pill!”

Charlie complained of many ailments, but he wasn’t interested in taking any medication. In fact, he refused to take pills offered to him by the institution. He feared being poisoned, I guessed. To this day, I’m not sure how many of his supposed maladies were real and how many were imagined. He talked about some of his disorders, only hinting at others. Inmates sometimes confirmed his disorders to me, but I don’t know whether they got their information from him or from some other source. I knew that Charlie didn’t spend any time in the infirmary.

He once told me that he had cancer and was nearing the end of his life. Possibly, this was another of his oblique or indirect references to death which didn’t necessarily correlate to reality. Nevertheless, he often spoke of his cancer in ways that sounded convincing. He would never tell me where in his body it started, saying that it didn’t matter. He informed me that it had spread to his lungs and his stomach, possibly his colon as well. He told me that he was able to remain strong, despite the cancer, only because he could control his strength with his mind. He was stronger than his cancer and would eventually rid his whole body of it, he bragged to me.

He also spoke of other health challenges: emphysema from a lifetime of chain smoking, facial burns from a prison attack in Vacaville in 1984, stomach problems from a Drano poisoning he endured at San Quentin, miscellaneous heart troubles, and depression born of the hopelessness of his lengthy incarceration. I always suspected that he had the added burden of the early stages of senility, but I was never certain of this.

There was another reason that Charlie was moved from San Quentin to Vacaville, I learned. He was having gang problems at his former home. There had been some threats made to him by the Mexican Mafia which was powerful in San Quentin. Had he remained where he was, someone eventually would have gotten to him and cut short his life. At Vacaville, Charlie was free from those threats because that prison was controlled by a gang that was an enemy of the Mexican Mafia. It gets complicated at times to follow the different gangs and their battles with each other, but in this case, the enemy of Charlie’s enemy became his friend and savior in his new institution. While Charlie never joined any gangs (indeed, he was a one-man gang), he did make some affiliations that helped protect him. These associations could rile up other antipathetic gangs and precipitate the breathing of violent threats.

Charlie suggested to me that his excuse of going to the CMF in Vacaville was just a cover, a reason to spiriting him away from the threats. I am not sure whether this is true or not. It is possible that Charlie didn’t want to appear mentally ill to me. Some inmates will come up with all sorts of excuses about why they go to CMF or why they had a psych-evaluation done--excuses that carefully veil the truth that they suffered from one form of mental illness or another.

In light of his physical ailments, there were times I wondered whether Charlie would die while being housed right next to me. I had lived on tiers long enough to know what it’s like when another inmate passes away. If a fight is not involved, usually the event happens quietly, often during sleep. I have been incarcerated in several places where the morning shift found a body and had to transport it to the prison morgue. Death makes you feel uncomfortable, but you get used to it. It’s a fact of life. Among the circles within which I associate, it’s the only way most inmates find their release from prison.

It was possible, I sometimes thought, that I would be the last person to which this famous icon would speak, granting me the privilege of hearing this man’s final words. I assured myself that if he were to die in his sleep some night, I would be able to recall our conversations from the previous night, including the final sentence or two before we said our “good nights.” I was sure that the media would want to know his last utterances.

When I asked Charlie about his time at the California Medical Facility, he said, “They gave me a job in the chapel. The door to the chapel was locked. The preacher opened the door, and closed and locked it behind me. As I looked around, I saw a real mess. There was a tall Indian about seven feet in height who was breaking out little squares from the stained glass window. They were setting me up with this Indian so that something might happen to me while he was in a rage. Fortunately, we became friends and cleaned up the mess together.

“Eventually,” Charlie continued, “we striped the old wax off the floor and polished it. We repaired the windows he had damaged. The room became as clean and shiny as a hallway at McNeal Island.”

He told me that they also planted a garden along side of the building with fruit and vegetables. Another Native American suggested that they create a sweat lodge, which they built to provide his group with a place to gather.

Charlie shared with me many stories in which he straightened out a mess in the prison. In his words, he was always the hero, always the one who solved the problem or created the solution. Not only at CMF, it appeared to me that Charlie was the champion of every institution he ever visited.

He once related to me, “There were some inmates in the psych unit making a lot of noise, banging on the doors, breaking the windows, and flooding the tiers. They clogged the toilets and sinks, while running the water, until the tier was flowing with ankle-deep water. There was trash everywhere.